Resign, CHEd chief told

MANILA, Philippines — Youth groups are demanding the resignation of the chairman of the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) for being “profit-oriented” following his proposal for an extra year in college to improve the quality of education in that level, their officials said Monday.

At the same time, the National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP) and Kabataang Pinoy [Filipino Youth], along with lawyer Adel Tamano, president of the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (University of the City of Manila, PLM) and United Opposition spokesman, said that CHEd Chairman Emmanuel Angeles’ plan only “favored profit-oriented higher educational institutions” and were “anti-poor and anti-student.”

“CHEd Chair Angeles is currently listed as member of the Board of Trustees of Angeles University Foundation as its corporate secretary. He has a reputation to have a negative bias towards the poor and marginalized,” said Tamano in a statement.

Vencer Crisostomo, Kabataan Pinoy spokesman, said the planned five-year program was “insensitivity to the difficulty being experienced by the students and parents due to high education and living costs.”

“This policy will cause a significant number of students to drop out from school especially considering that there is a global economic crisis. Instead of coming up with senseless projects like this, the government should focus on lowering education costs and making education more accessible,” he added.

At the same time, CHEd should “overhaul its educational policies” if it really wanted to improve the quality of education, said NUSP national president Alvin Peters.

“The current recommendations of CHEd and the government will only push the country’s education system into a worse crisis. This has been the case for the past years. The government should reverse its policy of deregulation and privatization of education and should raise the budgetary allocation for public higher education,” he said.